540 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1921. 



the case of many diseases; and indeed Mr. Baring-Gould 8 described 

 lycanthropy as a disease, associating it in this respect with the 

 mania for cattle-maiming and with a morbid desire to devour human 

 corpses. Cases of both of these I have met with in the Naga Hills, 

 the latter, however, being regarded by the Nagas themselves as 

 symptomatic of extreme insanity ; whereas the former is, like lycan- 

 thropy, merely a vice which is liable to be very troublesome to the 

 neighbors of those that practice it. 9 



Note on Ao Naya belief as to a certain form of relationship between men and 

 leopards. — One Longrizibba of Yongiinsen village was haunted by a leopard 

 which very frequently came at night and slept outside his house close to that 

 place by the wall nearest which Longrizibba himself was sleeping inside. 

 Whenever the leopard came, Longrizibba fell into a deep sleep and could not 

 be aroused by his wife, even though he had previously sharpened his spear 

 with a view to killing the animal. Then he took to sleeping on the platform 

 at the back of his house, when the leopard took to sleeping underneath. On 

 one occasion water was poured on to it, but without discouraging it. 



After this and other efforts to get rid of it, Longrizibba induced the leopard 

 to leave him alone by the sacrifice of a dog. This took place in 1919 when I 

 was on leave, and my attention was drawn to the case by Mr. Mills, Sub- 

 divisional Officer of Mokokchung, one of whose interpreters saw the leopard 

 outside the house at night. 



Apparently such associations of men with leopards are, according to the 

 Ao tribe, fairly frequent. The relations between the man and the leopard are 

 normally quite friendly and mutually harmless until on an appointed day 

 they are brought to an end by the leopard's devouring the man. 



If the haunting is caused by some ceremonial fault on the man's part, it 

 can be ended by a ceremony which includes the surrender of a cloth, a dao 

 sling, and a piece of the man's own hair. If, however, the relationship dates 

 from a man's infancy and has no cause that can be specified, he is unable to 

 break off the relationship. 



A mountain with twin peaks is pointed out by Ao as a meeting place of 

 tiger-men. 



The practice of surrendering to the leopard a piece of the haunted 

 man's hair is paralleled in the Chang tribe by the practice, when a 

 man loses himself in the forest, of cutting off a little hair and 

 putting it in the fork of a tree for the rock python which is believed 

 to have caused him to lose himself. After this the lost man is able 

 to find his way home. Semas under similar conditions cut a piece 

 off the fringe of their cloth instead of their hair. 



8 Book of Were-Wolves. 



B Prof. Elliot Smith tells me that Egyptian boys practise lycanthropy in association 

 with the forms of the common cat. A bibliography on the subject of lycanthropy will be 

 found at the end of Mr. McLennan's article in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica, but It relates almost entirely to the European races. 



